14 DAY TRIAL // I'm really glad I'm so excited about Dragon Age: Origins, because, if I hadn't been, I probably would have missed Journeys. I haven't really gotten into the whole browser-game cultural movement, mainly because every time I found myself in front of a computer I had a lot better games to go to. I had a bit of an attempt at Utopia, but the fact that I couldn't really spend more than ten minutes a day in the game was a complete turn-off. I don't need games to unwind or relax, I need them to get lost in them, to disappear off the face of the Earth and be reported missing by the living.
But, with all the teases BioWare let loose on the web, Origins managed to get me interested enough to try the browser spin-off. Usually, a spin-off or a sequel is, at best, as good as the original thing. Going by this rule, Dragon Age: Origins should be one of the best titles ever, because, even with my suspicious point of view regarding flash games, Journeys proved to be incredibly interesting.
The one thing that I liked the most was, without a doubt, the combat phase. It was a typical turn-based hex-grid combat that took me back to Heroes 2. Of course, here, the game focuses solely on the RPG element and all your “troops” are your characters. Map exploration is depicted in real-time, with no kind of limitations, and the combat screen follows the same rules. Moving doesn't chip away at you available combat options and, in the limited amount of hexes your character can move in a turn, you can run across back and forth until you get tired of parading in front of the enemies.
The only thing that ends your characters' turn is a direct action, an attack, be it melee or ranged or an active spell, like a direct damage or a heal. Passive feats for the warriors like Threaten or the mage's flaming weapons don't consume your actions and you can still act unhindered even after activating them. The story is also captivating and it really leaves you in need of more at the end of the first chapter, and the weapons are very varied and numerous, just like the fights. The game also offers some incentive to purchase the main Dragon Age game, with special items being unlocked into your EA account that can be used in the RPG.